The Obscure History of the World's First Synth, Built in 1901

The Telharmonium was one of the earliest synthesizers. But the history of this early Muzak forerunner has almost entirely disappeared: no recordings or extant versions of the machine exist today. Even in its own time, it failed to gain traction and served more as a nuisance to telephone companies than as an enormous success.

The device was drafted up by Thaddeus Cahill in 1893 as a way to transmit music by phone. He was awarded a patent in 1896, #580,035. "In his patent, Cahill used the term 'synthesizing.' This proves, some say, that the Telharmonium was truly the world's first Synthesizer," Jay Williston writes at the Synth Museum Magazine.

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In 1901, the first model was ready. It used electrical signals to create musical notes that were sent over a phone line, generated by an electric motor that doubled as an amplifier. Raised bumps on cylinders helped create musical contour notes, not unlike a music box, with the size of the cylinder determining pitch. The first public demonstration was in 1902, with telephone lines for transmission laid in New York City in 1905. In 1906, the large, noisy instrument was placed in the basement of the Metropolitan Opera House, piping music across phone lines and nearby loud speakers.

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The problem was, all cables leak off radio waves. Sending a gigantic, amplified signal on turn-of-the-20th-century phone lines was bound to cause trouble. The Telharmonium bled into other phone signals on nearby phone lines, received interference from telegraph lines, and caused abrupt interruptions of synthesized classical music into Naval radio transmissions, something the military was none-too-pleased with. Without enough subscribers, the New York Electric Music Company collapsed in 1908, closing for good in 1914.

So what became of the instrument, an early electronic synthesizer? "No recordings of the Telharmonium have survived. In 1950, Arthur T. Cahill, Thaddeus's brother, tried to find a home for the only remaining instrument, the first prototype," Williston writes. "But nobody was interested so he sold it for scrap." Meanwhile, Thaddeus Cahill died in 1934, far ahead of his time and in relative obscurity.

Still, Cahill's patent shows how to construct such a device, meaning that someone, somewhere could potentially resurrect it. Perhaps someday, we could hear the Telharmonium once again.